The Know-Nothing Oscar Pool

Backstory: Since 2009, I’ve had an annual Oscars wager with my friend Ryan. From 2009 to 2014, Ryan always won.

Ryan’s advantage? He is much smarter than I am. (Smart friends: I don’t recommend it.) He’d go to BetFair.com and identify the favorite in each category. (For close races, he’d supplement with a little extra research.) While Ryan leveraged the wisdom of the crowds, I’d fall back on my own personal favorites and erratic judgment. I’d lose because I couldn’t keep myself from “clever” (read: stupid) underdog picks.

Then, in 2015 I devised a new scoring system to neutralize Ryan’s advantage. An Oscar pool for know-nothings like me.

Picks would be scored based on their probability of winning. If prediction markets gave a film a 1-in-2 chance of winning, then its victory was worth 2 points. If they gave it a 1-in-15 chance of winning, then its victory was worth 15 points.

I rarely watch movies so I’m out, but I have the same problem with NCAA March Madness: when I pick clever, intelligent, prescient underdogs, mostly favorites make it to the final four, and when I pick all favorites, upsets are a dime-a-dozen. Can you do anything for ME?

p.s. to timewaster Ryan: the world is awash in neurosurgeons, get to work proving the Riemann Hypothesis

Maybe it will average the outcome, but there will be inferior picks if you are going to win. If you are going to win, you need to score a lot of points, and since everybody will average on 24 points, you want something with a high variance, so that you sometimes score 48 points, sometimes 0. Its irrelevant whether you lose 25-24 or 25-0, so I guess having a high variance will give you more wins?